Cloud's Rider

“Wish I had an answer for you,” Ridley said. But he didn’t.

And by now he’d had time to realize that not only did they have a winter problem, they were facing a spring and summer and years down the road problem, and the very scary prospect of not just Evergreen but all the villages on the mountain going into next autumn without supplies.

Much of their supply source for equipment and half their trade with the lowlands was a company down in Anveney town that might—who knew the minds of townfolk?—be very reluctant to send even the usual number of trucks up here without some hard dealing. The main source they had for food was Shamesey. Oil and gas came from the south. One truck lost, when Aby Dale had died— that happened. But Tarmin gone?

That was the staging area for all trucks going up to the High Loop and it was the depot for supplies, the warehouses for trade goods that were just too heavy to ship up: warehouses for everything coming down off the mountain and everything that had to be sent up—some items by oxcart, as things moved when the villagers were paying the freight; and some by truck, when the trucks hauling company loads had space and the item wasn’t too heavy.

Food for the High Loop villages stayed in warehouses in Tarmin before it moved up the Climb by oxcart. They were going to be eating a lot of bushdevil and willy-wisp if they couldn’t get lowland beef and pork. Flour already cost twice what it did in Tarmin, which was already three times its cost in the lowlands.

Gasoline and freight costs could easily quadruple for Evergreen.

And the oxen that made those runs—the only transportation for goods that didn’t run at Anveney’s cost for fuel—he didn’t need to ask young Fisher what their fate had been once those gates were open. They were gone. The menthat drove those teams were gone along with everything else edible that wasn’t cased in steel or locked behind it.

Tarmin gone meant nolocal goods moving until they replaced the oxen and the drivers. And oxen with experienced drivers didn’t exist except over on Darwin Peak—a far journey—or down in Shamesey district, which had a long-ru

“I tell you,” he said, “we’d better spend less time sitting in camp this winter, do a little extra hunting, store whatever we can. It’s going to be a long year.”

Callie shot him a look that said he’d caught her attention. “Think Cassivey will deal hard?”

That was the company in Anveney.

“Will snow fall this winter?” was his counter. “He’s a townsman. I tell you, if we don’t get some ox-teams up here it’s going to be a cold, damn expensive next winter, or we’re going to make a lot of trips with wheelbarrows up and down that road.”

“Shamesey’s going to know we’re in trouble. And they’lljack the price. It’s not going to be easy this summer.”

“They’ll rebuild Tarmin,” he said, and as he said it a thought came to him, the glimmering of an idea that, yes, Tarmin hadto exist: Anveney and Shamesey were as dependent on Rogers Peak as Rogers Peak settlements were on them, and even if they had help from Anveney’s most desperate—it wasn’t townsmen from the flat-lands that were going to be able to bring it back to life.

Chapter 8

Hearing Randy stirring, Carlo stretched the kinks out of his back; he’d been sleeping fitfully, coatless and in his stocking feet, leaning against the stones of the low furnace wall. The stretch stopped in a dry-air cough.

“You all right?” Randy asked.

“Yeah.” Carlo took a drink from the metal cup and then took a stale, crumbling biscuit off the fireside wall and offered it to him. “You want a biscuit? Saved it from the rider camp. There’s no tea, but there’s hot water. Tastes awful but it feels pretty good on the throat.”

Randy didn’t look enthusiastic—less so when Carlo got up and poured him a cup of hot water from the pot he’d set on the coals.

“Isn’t anybody going to feed us?” Randy asked. “Where iseverybody?”

“This is what we’ve got.” Carlo kept his temper down, kept his voice calm and reasoning. The kid had a temper of his own and he didn’t want to provoke it. “The guy they waked up to put us in here wasn’t real happy. He’s the blacksmith. And I get the impression he’d just as soon we weren’t here, but the marshal put us here, and that’s that, I guess, till they straighten things out.”

“Well, askhim where we can get something.”

“Kid, —we don’t have any money. Tarmin credit isn’t worth anything because there isn’t a Tarmin anymore. We won’t have any money to live on if we don’t get a job here, and right here in this place with this guy who doesn’t want us here is about the best job I’m going to be able to get, and the best you’regoing to be able to get. So eat the damn biscuit. I saved it for you and I’mhungry. There’s the ham you carried up the Climb.”

Randy took the biscuit, got into his coat pocket, took out the greasy packet of thawed ham and opened it. “Maybe we should have gone to Shamesey.”

“We don’t knowtowns. We don’t know anything about the flat-lands.”

“Da

“Da

“But—” Randy said.

“Are you ready for another hike through the snow? Next village? Maybe the next after that?”

“No.” A quiet, dejected no.

“If it happens—” Carlo said. “If it happens this place doesn’t have room for us, we’ll move. Thenwe’ll think about it. —If we have to.”

Randy took a bite out of the stale biscuit sandwich and washed it down with hot water. The kid looked on the verge of tears. Carlo’s throat was sore, his ears hurt and he was so stiff he could hardly move.

“I did knock quietly a while back—” Carlo nodded toward the door that didn’t lead outside, but to the smiths’ house, unlike their arrangement down in Tarmin. “The house is catty-angled to that door. In a passageway. And they’re not answering. It’s daylight, but they’re not stirring around much.” Carlo took a look to the side where the outside door showed light in the cracks. “But they weren’t going to fire up today because of the storm. Maybe tomorrow.”

“On a lousy biscuit?”

“ Best we can do, all right?” He shouldn’t have raised his voice. “I’d say go back to sleep. Your stomach won’t feel hungry that way. If we can’t raise the house and work something out by tomorrow, I’ll go out and see if Da

Randy considered the half biscuit he had left, much more forgivingly. “You want part of it?”

“Had mine.”

“The stuff on the sled was ours.”

“We threw everything off the sled. Remember?”

Maybe Randy didn’t remember. The kid looked entirely dejected.

“Yeah, but—”

“Best we can do, I’m telling you.”

Fact was, they’d only had the ham in their pockets because Da

“I should have asked the riders,” he said to soften the tone. “I should have thought of it when we left the camp, but we had enough carrying you, and I didn’t know where we were going. Didn’t know they’d be so hard-ass and not feed us, to tell the truth. —And right now I don’t want to be gone from here in case the owner comes in to talk to us. It was hard enough getting in here in the first place.”